| Summary/Abstract |
At the dawn of the 1970s, Hong Kong was one of the world’s most notorious cities. While the British Crown colony was no longer a modest entrepôt but an export powerhouse, it still suffered from an unflattering image as a seedy, lawless frontier. It stood at the nexus of a heroin pipeline that stretched across Asia, North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Its population of addicts was estimated to be the highest in the world on a per capita basis.1 Critics everywhere assailed the colonial government for failing to clean up the city. In the United States, newspapers and politicians blasted the colony as the world’s heroin supplier just as President Richard Nixon launched his administration’s “war on drugs” and Congress threatened to impose economic sanctions. In Hong Kong, Chinese residents bemoaned official impotence in the face of runaway crime and uncontrolled trafficking. Articulating a widespread anxiety, one journalist lamented: “The residents of Hong Kong know that the city is flooded with narcotics, with many people forfeiting their futures and many good families torn apart because of drugs.”
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